Peter, while I agree with what you are saying in regard to the number of starts a year, the problem is that those same pitchers also burned out fairly easily as they were asked to do a TON of work each start, as they were expected to finish every game they started. We have many examples of pitchers like Larry Corcoran, Frank Killen, Elmer Smith, etc. that went from good to terrible quickly due to their work-load. This is also what makes Cy Young an absolute freak of nature that he lasted as long as he did.
Ultimately though I agree with you that it is hard to compare 19th century pitchers to later ones because they are so different
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